If you asked a child or young adult to describe the typical hero, they might tell you about a person with strong muscles, an unblemished and handsome face, and a charismatic and outgoing personality. Chances are, even an adult would respond this way. The representation of marginalized groups in fiction remains shockingly sparse in modern America, but more and more content creators are striving to portray disabled characters and characters of color. Disability is often brushed aside, misrepresented, or just severely lacking in general. Young adults and children with disabilities must sift and sort through the dismal pile of books and shows about able white kids and settle with what the societal default is. The white, cis, able, male is the default choice in character customizable video games, the basis for thousands of stories, movies, and T.V. shows, as well as positions of power in America. So as a society, how do we create positive content to show young people that being anything other than the default is perfectly okay? We can look at the Fries Test, a guide based on the feminist Bechdel Test, in order to determine if a work positively and constructively features disabled characters. The test was created by Kenny Fries, a poet who primarily writes about his identity as a gay, disabled man.
The questions are as followed:
Does a work have more than one disabled character?
Do the disabled characters have their own narrative purpose other than the education and profit of a non-disabled character?
Is the character’s disability not eradicated either by curing or killing?
When it comes to diversity, one of the works that immediately comes to mind is the 2005 animated television show, Avatar: The Last Airbender. In this paper, I will analyze how Avatar portrays and handles disabled or differently-abled characters in an overall positive and thoughtful way through characterization, use of the Fries Test and Simi Linton’s article, Reassigning Meaning.
Avatar takes place in a fictional universe where people can be born with the fantastical ability to control or “bend” one of the natural elements of fire, earth, water, or air. As the show progresses, the main protagonist, Aang, meets several characters who propel him or hinder his journey to eventually restore peace to his warring world. Avatar depicts multiple characters with different types of disabilities, both physical and invisible. Avatar is able to pass the Fries Test with flying colors thanks to its cast of incredibly well represented disabled characters.
Toph Beifong is a young blind girl who is first shown in a vision seen by Aang to be his potential earthbending teacher. Toph is treated by her parents in an ableist way, deciding that there is no way Toph can live a normal, functioning life due to her blindness and that she must be hidden and protected from danger. Her father barely allows her to go outside unattended, claiming that she “is blind and tiny and helpless and fragile,” which are all stereotypical ableist views. However, Toph is secretly a very gifted earthbender, and she requires little aid to navigate the world at all. She even sneaks away at night to compete in earthbending competitions to improve her bending. Because of her age and disability, she is often underestimated, but it is actually Toph’s blindness that grants her a deeper understanding of earthbending. The depiction of Toph’s blindness is a very positive and empowering part of her, due to the fact that there is no mention of her or any other character wanting or attempting to cure her. She created her own style of fighting and maneuvering because she has a different type of “sight.” In the episode, The Blind Bandit, Toph explains that she uses her earthbending to sense vibrations underneath her saying she “sees with her feet.” However, this is not the same as seeing with eyes and it is not a cure or cover-up for her disability. Toph still has limitations with her blindness. She is unable to read or write and is she is uncomfortable with being up high, in water, or on loose terrain. In Simi Linton’s Reassigning Meaning, Linton talks about the implication of “overcoming” a disability. The phrase could either mean that the disability no longer limits the individual, or that the disabled individual overcomes society’s expectation of them. Toph never had to “overcome” her blindness. It is established in little ways throughout Avatar that Toph uses her differently-abled body to her advantage, therefore being capable of teaching Aang a unique way to understand earthbending and in time become the most powerful earthbender in the world. The Fries Test also asks if the disabled character is only there to profit an abled one and Avatar passes this as well. Toph is an important character in her own right and she has her own narrative arcs and struggles that are not purely about her disability. For example, Toph is a confrontational and sarcastic individual whose abrasive personality often clashes with the other female member of their team, Katara. The two of them work out their issues by communicating with each other to resolve whatever is going on between them—all that has nothing to do with her disability. Toph’s blindness is a vital part of her identity without making her into a one-dimensional character.
Toph is not the only disabled character in Avatar. Late in the first season, the main group travels to a temple where they meet an energetic young man in a wheelchair named Teo. Teo is a minor character in the show, but he is introduced in a very refreshing and non-ableist manner. Teo is met with no surprise or pity regarding his paralyzed condition by the other characters. Teo simply exists in the world with his disability without centralizing the narrative around it. There is also no dialogue about being “confined to a wheelchair,” or that Teo “suffers from paralysis,” as Linton also cites in his article to be harmful in creating an association with helplessness and victimization of disabled persons. One of the members of the group simply compliments his wheelchair, normalizing Teo’s condition to possible wheelchair-using children who watch the show. Teo’s father, built him a wheelchair that has gliding capabilities similar to airbending, even though Teo is not a bender of any kind. Although it is fantastical to be able to glide through the air, it is not portrayed to be a cure for his disability or a way or change him as a nondisabled character.
Avatar also features characters with mental illness or invisible disabilities. Zuko is a young man who grew up under an abusive father, named Ozai. Zuko actually begins the show as an antagonist, whose goal is to capture Aang and “restore his honor,” a task given to him by his father, who holds the highest position of power in his nation. Zuko is obsessed with this goal and would do anything in order to gain respect from him, despite his father’s uncaring cruelty.
Ozai physically scarred Zuko’s face by burning him when he was just thirteen years old, a mark that Zuko thinks of as a constant physical reminder of his own shame. Ozai’s mistreatment of his son caused Zuko to be physical disfigured, as well as experience trauma and depressive tendencies throughout his life. Zuko exhibits these tendencies throughout his interactions with other characters. He frequently lashes out in anger and rejects any emotional help or guidance from his uncle, who cares deeply about him. Although it is a negative stereotype for a mentally ill character to be an antagonist, Zuko undergoes an emotional redemption arc throughout the entire series to heal and better understand himself and his personal mental struggles. Zuko’s emotional arc highlights his struggles with mental illness significantly. In the first two seasons of Avatar, Zuko constantly doubts his own decisions and deals with internal turmoil about his home-life at every turn. It is common for disabled characters to be used to exhibit villainy because of their condition, creating misrepresented connections between disability and violence. However, Zuko defies this idea, and breaks away from his abusive family and seeks to join Aang and his friends in order to help them restore peace to the world, as well as his own personal life. He does aid the able-bodied protagonist, but again, Zuko serves an extremely important narrative purpose outside of simply existing for the main character. Although he works through many of his mental struggles and trauma, they are not erased from his life. His scar is not gone, and his future actions as the successor to the throne are attributed to his life experience. In Zuko’s case, Avatar would pass the Fries Test for its complex, multidimensional approach to disability in media directed towards children and young adults. Tackling the subject of blatant parental abuse is largely uncharted territory for cartoons and television for younger audiences in the like.
Lastly, one of the more controversial portrayals of disability is Azula, the sister of Zuko. Azula is an interesting case in Avatar, as she is an opposite case to Zuko in respect to her relationship with her father. She grew up being viewed a prodigy, much more talented than Zuko, who was rejected by Ozai. Azula can also be discussed as having sadistic and sociopathic tendencies that alter into what can be described as madness. Reassigning Meaning picks apart what can truly be defined as disability, claiming it is about personal choice to identify. An article titled Coming Out Mad, Coming Out Disabled by Elizabeth Brewer discusses the subject of including madness in disability studies. She speaks about the similarities and differences between being labeled as “mentally ill,” or “mad,” and the implications that come with each. As mentioned earlier, portraying a villain with madness may lead to unhealthy associations and assumptions. Azula exhibits rather sociopathic tendencies, a product of being worshipped as the princess of the Fire Nation throughout her entire life. What she lacked because of this was the presence of genuine friendships and connections to others. She is also a primary antagonist who controls everyone around her by using fear, as she recruits her two “friends” to join her by threatening them. Azula is also shown having trouble relating to other teens her age since she is hyper-aware of her impact on other people. She does not understand how to act in casual settings with people her age as shown in the episode The Beach. This episode plays off most of these situations as comedic. For example, Azula is shown not knowing how to flirt with boys, which revealed a much more awkward aspect compared to how the audience usually sees her, which is cunning and dangerous. Azula represents many negative aspects of media portraying disability. While Zuko learned how to handle his feelings and personal identity, Azula slowly becomes mentally unhinged after the betrayal of her closest two allies. She begins talking to hallucinations and becoming progressively more self-destructive. Her symptoms can be linked to paranoid schizophrenia. She is restrained and thrown in prison for her loyalty to her dictator father and her mental condition. It can be argued that Azula’s madness was a result of her losing control of her life, and she was considered an evil, manipulative character who must be locked up, creating an unhealthy relationship between disability, madness, and general negativity. Using Azula in this way perpetuates that being “crazy,” a word considered derogatory according to Elizabeth Brewer’s article equates to being abnormal and even evil. Despite Azula’s controversial portrayal of disability in Avatar: The Last Airbender, she is an undeniably layered character that would later be expanded upon in comics released after the show finished airing.
Despite the magical, expansive world of Avatar: The Last Airbender, being intended for younger audiences, disability is not treated lightly. Avatar deeply explores facets of disability that are rarely touched on in other young adult and children literature and media such as mental illness and effectively makes use of the format to create interesting, multidimensional characters and situations. Not once are Avatar characters with disability purely characterized through that one trait. The series does not suggest any ableist language unless it is established that doing so is harmful and negative. The Fries Test proposes questions for positively represented disabled characters in which Avatar: The Last Airbender pass easily. Future works of fiction for young adults and children should use Avatar as a model to represent disability in a thoughtful and positive manner.
I pledge:
Word Count: 2081
Works Cited
Dimartino, Michael D and Bryan Konietzko, creators. Avatar: The Last Airbender. Nickelodeon Animation Studios, 2005.
Brewer, Elizabeth. “Coming Out Mad, Coming Out Disabled.” Literatures of Madness: Disability Studies and Mental Health, edited by Elizabeth J Donaldson, PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2018, pp. 11–30.
Linton, Simi. “Reassigning Meaning.” Claiming Disability: Knowledge and Identity, NYU Press,1998, pp 8-33.
